


i looked at you and knew

by wjh



Series: one day you'll grow up and see (i'm not the man you think i am) [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Italian Tony Stark, Light Angst, No Spoilers, Parenthood, Past Child Abuse, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child, Unplanned Pregnancy, non-graphic childbirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 06:04:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19289665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wjh/pseuds/wjh
Summary: Tony’s entire world goes sideways when he finds out he has a son on the way.





	i looked at you and knew

**Author's Note:**

> i love these kinds of aus, i just had to write one of my own. this idea was dogging after me for almost three weeks before i caved and started writing it yesterday. the timeline here is nov 2000-aug 2001 by the way!
> 
> don't be afraid to point out typos or weird sentences to me bc this is unbetaed and i always wind up missing _something_ when i check over my fics myself
> 
> anyway, hope you enjoy!

“Sir, there seems to be a disturbance at the front gate that requires your attention.”

Tony sighs, setting his tools down before he looks up to frown at the ceiling. “Jar, didn't I tell you to only interrupt me in case of emergencies.”

JARVIS does not immediately reply, but when he does, his tone has changed. “I believe this is something you do not want to dismiss, sir.”

“Fine,” Tony groans, finding a somewhat decent rag to clean his hands. “What is it?”

Again, the AI takes a moment to respond, voice low and almost muted, unsure of the response it will receive. “A woman named Mary Fitzpatrick is demanding to be let through to see you, sir. She claims to be with child. _Your_ child, to be exact.”

Tony rolls his eyes but stands up anyway. Plenty of women have claimed to be pregnant with his kid. None of them have ever been true, of course, but he deals with them personally anyway. Just in case.

He walks up the stairs from his lab and strolls outside, shading a hand over his eyes as the hot Californian sun hits him. Thanksgiving has just recently passed and one would think that winter would be prevalent even in Malibu, but one would be ultimately wrong. California is always too hot and Tony loves it.

He probably could have just driven himself to the front gate, but his legs and back ache from all his time spent sitting in the lab, tinkering away. He needs the exercise, no matter how little it is.

Up ahead at the front gate, a woman is standing with her arms crossed. A car is beside her, probably her own, and Happy stands in front, blocking her entrance. Tony rolls his eyes at them both but makes sure his expression is neutral once he is close enough to be heard without shouting.

The woman is pretty with long, brown hair and dark brown eyes. Her build is slight and she is plenty attractive, even with her glasses. Tony can definitely see how he got into bed with her, but he doesn't quite recall the experience of it. If anything, he would be hard pressed to even remember her name if he had happened to run into her someplace else.

“Mary! It's been a while. How are you?”

Mary doesn't say anything, only cocks her head to the side with an unimpressed look on her face. Tony fights back a sigh and waves a hand towards Happy.

“Let her through, Hap. We’ve got business to attend to.”

Happy grumbles, but opens the gate anyway and mutters a curse under his breath when Tony walks back towards the house while Mary climbs into her car. She beats him to the front door but waits patiently as he walks up the drive. Tony takes his time, stretching out his legs as he approaches.

“Let’s go inside, shall we?” Tony asks.

Mary doesn't reply again, but she follows dutifully after him when he steps through his front door. JARVIS does not greet him as he usually does and Tony makes a beeline for his office.

“Please, sit. I’m sure you don’t want to have this conversation standing up,” Tony says, motioning towards the chairs in front of his desk. “Do you want anything to drink?”

“Just water is fine. Thank you,” Mary responds.

 _Ah, I remember that voice,_ Tony thinks to himself. He smiles and makes a show of pouring her drink from his bar in the corner of the room. He hands her the cup and sits behind his desk with his own drink in hand.

They stare at each other for another moment until Mary clears her throat and sets her drink down on Tony’s desk. “You know why I’m here.”

She doesn't phrase it like a question, but Tony decides to treat it like one anyway.

“You’re pregnant. Congratulations!” Tony smiles, clapping his hands together once.

Mary doesn't smile back, but he's sure she's fighting not to roll her eyes at him. “I want to get the paternity test done and over with, so you’ll know it's yours.”

Tony nods, all businesslike now as he tips his head up towards the ceiling. “Just need a bit of your blood to do it. Jar, mind setting her up in the bathroom?”

“Will do, sir.”

Mary doesn't jump as the AI responds, which surprises Tony since he usually garners a lot of entertainment by introducing new people to JARVIS. He stands again and leads the way towards his closest bathroom, watching as Mary steps in and closes the door behind her.

He hears the water running after a few minutes and then the door opens and there’s Mary. She looks a little pale, so he offers her his arm and walks them carefully back to his office where she can sit down again. As soon as she has settled, he pushes her cup from earlier back into her hand and sits in the other chair beside her.

He knows next to nothing about pregnancy or pregnant women, but Tony isn't heartless either. No matter what the media may like to paint him as.

Mary is quiet as they wait for the results. Tony added DNA tests to JARVIS’ database after the third woman who claimed he impregnated her came knocking on his door. Since then, he’s improved the software remarkably and shortened the waiting time. He has been thinking about sharing it with hospitals, but what kind of questions would that earn?

Ones he doesn't want to answer, that's for sure.

By the time JARVIS is announcing that he has the results, Mary is looking a lot better. Her water is mostly gone too because when Tony offered to get her more, she politely declined.

And isn't that a game changer? Most of the women he has dealt with before for this kind of business have been angry, nervous, scared or a mix of all three. Mary, on the other hand, is polite and direct. A welcoming change.

“Lay it on us, Jar,” Tony says, eyes on the ceiling instead of the woman next to him.

“It is a match, sir. Miss Fitzpatrick is carrying your child,” JARVIS announces, his tone almost proud.

Tony’s entire world goes sideways.

He blinks up at the ceiling for an indefinite amount of time until he remembers that Mary is beside him. She looks calm, assured too, but Tony has a war waging on inside him.

“I want you to keep the baby,” Mary says, blunt and to the point. “My fiancé and I can’t afford to keep it and he doesn't want to raise a child when it's not his. I don’t want to put the baby in foster care after it's born either. Our child would never live a happy life there.”

_Our child. Oh, God. You’ve screwed up big time now, Tony._

“You don't have to decide right now. In fact, I want you to take some time to think about this, but I want _you_ to keep our baby,” Mary murmurs.

“Why?” is all Tony is able to gasp out.

Mary smiles, reaching out to push his hair away from his face. “You might think the opposite, but I know our child would have the best life with you. So just think on it. I left my number with your security guard out front. When you’ve made a decision, call me.”

Tony nods because he doesn't know what else to do and watches Mary rise. He stumbles out of his chair, grabbing a sticky note and pen to write on. He scribbles Pepper’s number and email across the tiny page then scratches those out and writes his own instead. He then tears the sticky note off and pushes it into Mary’s hands, feeling faint.

“I’ll cover the bills, just send them here. Anything else you need, send it here too and it’ll be taken care of. Don’t worry about the cost,” Tony stumbles over his words, half-crazed as Mary accepts his offer.

“Thank you, Mr. Stark,” she says, folding the sticky note and pushing it into the front pocket of her shorts. “Remember to call me.”

Tony nods again, this time a little less out of speechlessness and more out of agreement. Mary smiles once more, the sight beautiful and heartbreaking all at once. She presses her palm to his cheek and then turns and walks out towards her car, driving away from him with his child.

_His child._

Pepper’s going to kill him.

  
  


* * *

 

 

For three weeks, Tony tinkers away in his lab. He refuses to see anybody that isn't Pepper, Happy or Rhodey and works the better part of his days and nights away.

He’s rarely in the office, only allowing Pepper to drag him in when there is an important board meeting he absolutely cannot miss again. Obadiah breathes down his neck for the new plans on the weapon they mean to release soon, but Tony ignores him. Only Pepper and Happy know of his predicament and neither one of them are inclined to give him helpful advice, but Tony can't blame them.

He pays to keep them around. Of course, they aren't going to help him with decisions like this. Decisions that will change the course of his entire life and likely that of his company.

But he isn't giving them much credit either, is he? He knows that either of the two would be willing to listen and put their two cents in about what he should do, but he doesn't want them to.

The fact of the matter is that Tony _wants_ to keep his child more than anything in this world. He wants it more than he has ever wanted anything, but he knows he would only screw it up. His own relationship with his father was vying for his praise and then resorting to acting out instead to just get his attention. His mother was kind and she never allowed Howard to lay a hand on him while she was present, but she never knew about all the _other_ instances either. Jarvis, their butler and Tony’s pseudo-father did, but if Maria did not take heed of the hints Jarvis dropped every now and then, what were any of them to do really?

Tony’s life now is a mess. He jumps into bed with anyone attractive and willing enough, drinks like it’s his last night on this pathetic Earth, and buries himself in his work whenever it interests him enough. Pepper is the one who sets him straight half the time. And still, Tony is a mess.

He has had more than a dozen women claim he knocked them up and only one has ever been true. Only one out of hundreds of one night stands. Tony has always been careful to wrap up, but even then he still ends up with this large amount of woman vying for him to take care of a baby that isn’t his. Of course, he gives them some money anyway because he has enough to spare and he isn’t a heartless bastard. And yet Mary has been the only pregnant woman who ever approached him with a clear head, a determined attitude and a kind word for him about this. He could almost imagine how well mannered their kid would be until he ruined it.

And what about the press? He was shoved into the limelight as soon as he was born. His childhood was nowhere near as normal as Rhodey's had been. It's what made him into the man he is now, a drunk and a workaholic who can't seem to stay out of the way of cameras and flashing lights no matter how hard he tries. Of course, his own father didn't help matters but he can't take all the blame either.

Tony _wants_ to keep his child, wants to watch them grow up and teach them how to ride a bike and tie their own shoes the same way Jarvis did for him. The same way his father did not.

Is it worth it though to subject that innocent baby to all his fuckups and inconsistent behavior just so that he could have even a _slight_ chance of proving he is nothing like his father?

Before Tony can think on it any longer, his phone rings. He stares at it for a moment, wondering who it could be and trying to figure out if it would be worth it to get up from his lab table and walk all the way towards his desk. He almost startles when JARVIS speaks up and glares up at the ceiling.

"Sir, Miss Fitzpatrick has sent you the bill for her first prenatal check-up."

Tony releases a breath he had not known he was holding, rushing towards his phone with a sudden sense of urgency he didn't have before. Mary's email is short and to the point with two attachments of the bill and an ultrasound photo. He can barely breathe as he loads the photo to his servers and blows it up in front of him, hand raised as if afraid to touch the projection. JARVIS has already allotted the appropriate funds into Mary's bank account to cover her bill, but Tony is too absorbed in looking at the photo to do much else.

He doesn't know how long he stands there, simply taking in the sight of the tiny little speck that is his child. JARVIS is quiet as he looks on, not offering something for Tony to latch to.

But it probably isn't necessary anyway.

"Jar, reply to Mary's email and ask if everything is well with the baby and the location and date of her next appointment," Tony announces, not taking his eyes off the ultrasound photo.

"Done. Will you need anything else, sir?" JARVIS asks, tone polite but knowing.

Tony nods his head, wiping what feels suspiciously like a tear from his face. "Once you have the necessary information, please schedule my jet a flight plan for the day before spanning to the day after Mary's next check-up. Look at the available property nearby as well and pick one for me to stay in for an indefinite amount of time."

"Very well, sir."

"Oh, and buy the hospital or doctor's office she visits too. Arrange for all future visits and medicines, whether prenatal or not, to be paid by me."

"Very well, sir," JARVIS repeats, amused.

Tony ignores that, saving the photo in a new folder he promptly renames as " _Bambino_ " while his phone rings again.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Mary is more than surprised to see him at the next check-up.

She's alone, and showing just a little, but she looks well. Tony smiles at her as she stands up to greet him, pressing a kiss to both her cheeks before he settles down beside her in the stiff waiting room chairs. Tony had made sure that no one else would have an appointment at the same time as them, giving them a three-hour window of solitude. He paid off the doctors and nurses to achieve it then also made sure that everybody who had to reschedule their appointments because of them would still be tended to just the same.

So Mary shouldn't actually be waiting to be seen at all, but Tony asked the front nurses to not call her in until he had arrived.

"How's everything?" Tony asks, fixing the ends of his jacket as he avoids making eye contact with her.

Mary takes hold of his arm. "I'm fine, just a little morning sickness, but we're okay."

Tony nods, biting his lip until he decides to take the plunge. "I want to keep the baby."

"I knew you would," Mary says, smiling at him. "He'd have such a good life with you, Mr. Stark."

"Just call me, Tony. You are carrying our child, after all."

Mary nods, still smiling. "Tony."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Tony attends all of Mary's check-ups. No matter how inconvenient it may be or if he has to skip out on a meeting that will determine the wellbeing of his company, he shows up for each and every one of the appointments.

At the fifth one, they find out they're having a boy and Tony throws himself into a panic again.

Is he going to be like his father with his son? Would this be easier if he were having a daughter instead?

The only one who is able to get him out of his head is Rhodey and that's mostly due to a tin of cookies and an indiscreet threat to fly his mother up to knock some sense into Tony herself. Tony loves old Roberta, but he would rather she did not try and give him parenting advice just yet. Maybe after the baby's born. _Maybe_.

By the seventh check-up, Tony has a room ready and set-up for Peter in both his home in Malibu and the penthouse suite JARVIS found for him in New York. He's read the best parenting books JARVIS had been able to find and started drafting a hundred new codes to add to JARVIS' database once his son is born. He still needs to figure out what clothes to get and decides to wait until he can drag Pepper off with him. The nursery in both houses is painted a light purple with constellations painted on the ceiling. Tony has Peter's crib set up in his room and a traveling pen ready in New York where he will stay for one week after the birth before bringing Peter back to Malibu.

Mary is now swollen with child and tires easily. Tony still has not met her fiancé, Richard, but from what he's gleaned, he hopes he won't have to meet him ever. Richard cares nothing for Peter and wants this whole _thing_ to be over with so he and Mary can have their wedding and continue with their careers. Mary keeps telling Tony she's lucky that Richard forgave her for cheating on him and Tony supposes that he could force himself to understand her fiancé's point of view. He wouldn't want to raise a child that wasn't his either, but Peter _is_ his.

Peter is _his_ son and Tony doesn't like the way Richard treats him. He wonders what would happen if Mary were to change her mind and keep Peter instead. Not that she seems to have second thoughts about this, but Tony likes to be prepared. Just in case.

Of course, Richard does take care of Mary and is there for her when Tony is in Malibu, but as they reach the eighth month of Mary's pregnancy, Tony makes a point of being present often. She has check-ups weekly now, to make sure everything is going smoothly until the birth and Tony attends to some business in New York for the meantime. He frequently invites Mary back to his penthouse and they look over the nursery together, choosing some clothes that they think Peter might like.

Pepper gives him an earful about being away from the main branch for so long, but Tony ignores it. At least until he calls her in a panic when Mary goes into labor two weeks early. She promises to be there as soon as Mary is done giving birth and the thought of having Pepper to lean on calms him considerably. She's always been the one to reign him in when his ego or imagination gets the better of him. Pepper's his backbone and his self-control all rolled into one.

He hasn't the faintest idea what he would do without that woman in his life.

Tony rushes Mary to the hospital and lets her hold his hand with more strength than he thought possible from her as the doctor and nurses rush around them. Her contractions have been getting shorter and shorter as the staff hurries to get everything ready in the delivery room. Tony is forced into scrubs that do nothing for his figure, but then Mary starts to cry. Her screams follow soon after, each tear and shout hurting Tony more than she could ever probably guess. Richard isn't here, but Tony didn't really expect him to be anyway.

Mary's two weeks early and while it means Tony might be able to take Peter home to Malibu sooner than expected, he has no idea what it will mean for him once he is out of the womb. He starts to panic about it, thinking that maybe Peter is just a little _too_ early until one of the nurses looks at him funny and mentions how the baby is a week too late to be considered a preemie and should be fine once out.

Tony calms down after that but winces in tune with Mary's sobs.

It's not until hours later on August 10th, 2001, that Peter Stark takes his first breath and wails loudly as he is received into the world.

He's bloody and so tiny that for a second, Tony is worried the nurse had it all wrong, but then Peter's handed off to him as they work on Mary and he's too focused on looking down at his son to notice much else. Peter quiets as soon as Tony starts to gently rock him, making sure that his head is supported and he is tucked in close to Tony's chest so he feels safe.

Tony thought he wouldn't be one of those parents that claim their kid is the most beautiful thing on this planet straight out of the womb, except he really should have known better than to think that. One look at his son was all it took for Tony to fall in love with him.

Mary is breathing easier beside him, covered in sweat and her hair in complete disarray but she doesn't ask to hold Peter and Tony doesn't offer. She told him before that it would be easier if she never got the chance to hold him in her arms before Tony took him.

A nurse takes Peter back and cleans him up, swaddling him in a diaper that looks huge on him before setting him down in a carrier that Tony can push into the hallway. He steps out while Mary is cleaned up and then transferred to the room Tony set up for her. Tony is so engrossed in drinking in the image of his tiny, newborn son sleeping that he doesn't notice Pepper or Rhodey waiting in the hallway. They rise from the stiff hospital chairs they have spent hours sitting in and approach him.

Pepper touches his shoulder while Rhodey crouches down to look into the carrier and stare at Peter. Tony turns to face his assistant, offering her a smile he is certain has never graced his face before.

"Everything okay?" Pepper asks, eyes flickering from Tony to Peter and back. "Happy wanted to come up, but he said hospitals creep him out."

Tony nods, laughing at Happy's excuse as he turns to stare at his son once again, feeling something warm like sunlight slide over his chest and surround his heart. "Everything's fine."

Peter snuffles in his sleep, squirming before he settles again when Tony leans down, instinctively pressing his palm down on his son's stomach. Rhodey grins at him, patting Tony on the back as he stands.

"Look at that, he already knows who his daddy is," Rhodey teases.

But the jab doesn't do anything to ruin Tony's mood. Instead, he laughs to himself under his breath and rubs Peter's stomach rhythmically.

"It's alright, Petey. You can sleep for as long as you want. Daddy will watch over you and make sure you're safe," Tony croons to his son, leaning forward to press a gentle kiss to Peter's forehead.

Peter doesn't grace that with a response, not like he could considering the fact that he can't speak, but the snorts of laughter behind Tony are all he needs at this moment anyway. Two of his closest friends and his son.

Nothing else.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! i don't know when the second part will be out, but go ahead and mention what you'd like to see as part of peter's firsts!
> 
> [tumblr](https://qobiin.tumblr.com) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/wingedseok)


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